Should I Become an Academic Coach?
Back in 2008, when I first started working with student clients, the term “academic coach” or “academic life coaching” was practically unheard of.
Fast forward to today, and more families than ever are turning to Google in search of support for their anxious, overwhelmed, and unmotivated students. Some of the top searches include:
Academic life coach
ADHD coach
Executive function coach
And more!
Coaching has grown into a thriving and essential field in the world of education — and even more so given the COVID pandemic.
The demand for this kind of support feels bottomless—stretching across the country and the globe. If you’ve been wondering whether this is a career path you’d enjoy (and thrive in), you’re not alone!
In this blog post, we’ll explore:
what academic coaching is and how it differs from tutoring
professions that transition well into academic coaching
5 key questions to understand academic coaching
3 questions to assess your readiness for a coaching business
behind the scenes of my coaching business
and more!
Whether you’re considering this as a brand-new career or thinking of adding coaching to your current work, my goal is to help you decide if growing your business as an academic life coach is the right move for you.
Let’s dive in!
What exactly IS an academic (or executive function) coach?
Let’s start by clarifying what an academic coach actually does.
An academic life coach works 1:1 with students outside the school setting, helping them de-stressify their lives and build confidence—not just in their academics, but in all areas of life.
Specifically, academic coaches empower students with strategies for:
Time management
Organization
Effective studying
Self-advocacy
Mindset and motivation
Goal setting and achievement
Here’s the twist: while tutors focus on a single content area, academic coaches—and executive function coaches—take a much broader approach. Both roles aim to support students in building the foundational skills that drive success across all areas of learning and life.
Executive function skills like planning, prioritizing, managing distractions, and self-regulation are at the heart of academic coaching. By focusing on these skills, academic coaches help students develop habits and strategies that make learning more efficient and sustainable.
What makes this work extra exciting is its versatility. The strategies we teach often apply to every subject, not just the one the student thinks they need help with. That’s where the real transformation happens.
A quick note on terminology: I started as an "academic coach," and that term feels most natural to me. However, if you prefer calling yourself an "executive function coach" or something else entirely, that’s perfectly fine too.
What folks have the MOST success as academic coaches?
The best academic coaches share one key trait: they love working with young people, especially teenagers. If you don’t have a special affinity for teens—their quirks, their potential, their occasionally eye-roll-worthy antics—this may not be the right path for you.
But loving teens isn’t enough! It takes a certain kind of person to succeed in this field. Here are some career backgrounds that many successful academic life coaches have transitioned from:
Teachers
Current teachers who are feeling burned out but aren’t ready to leave education entirely—or those who want to keep teaching but would love to supplement their income with something meaningful and flexible.School Counselors
Counselors disillusioned by the reality of their role, where paperwork and scheduling have overshadowed the deep, personal connections they hoped to build with students.Retired Educators
Retirees who want to stay active and earn income for a few more years in a creative, nurturing environment—without the long hours and high demands of traditional school settings.Tutors
Tutors who struggle to command higher rates and recognize that adding academic life coaching to their skill set could elevate their offerings and their income.Parents of Struggling Learners
Parents who successfully supported their own child through academic challenges and discover they have a talent for this work, often including homeschool parents with firsthand experience guiding young learners.Life Coaches
Life coaches who’ve realized their true calling lies in working with teens and want to tailor their skills to meet the unique needs of young people.Educational or Occupational Therapists
Professionals who love teaching strategies and providing wraparound support for families, but want more time to connect deeply with individual students.
Do you come from a different background? I’m constantly surprised by the variety of professionals exploring academic life coaching! Whether or not you see yourself in one of the categories above, I’m thrilled you’re considering this meaningful work.
7 Questions to Decide Whether You Can Hack It
The following seven questions will be helpful as you discern whether you’re ready to jump into this rewarding line of work.
The first four questions center around issues related to the content and structure of coaching; the second set of three questions will help you discern whether you can hack the unique challenges of self-employment.
The Nature of Coaching
The first four questions I want you to consider address the actual work of coaching students. Let’s explore them in detail:
1 – Am I passionate about learning, and do I have a big enough toolbox of strategies to teach students?
The most successful academic coaches are those with a robust toolbox of specific strategies around time management, organization, study skills, self-advocacy, and more.
Not every student benefits from every strategy, so it’s essential to have a toolbox so expansive that you and your client can collaboratively choose the best tools for their needs.
This is crucial!
While many life coaches for teens excel at uncovering students' gifts, strengths, motivations, and mental blocks, this alone isn’t sufficient. Many teenagers have never been taught fundamental skills on how to be effective students. These hard skills are critical and should be taught alongside soft skills like goal setting and mindset.
The most successful academic life coaches:
Are passionate about learning.
LOVE gathering new tools and strategies to help students succeed.
Continuously expand their coaching toolbox with fresh tips and techniques.
Additionally, great coaches apply these strategies in their own lives. Sharing personal experiences of applying learning tools provides authenticity and credibility when working with students.
How full is your toolbox of study strategies? How excited are you about learning new tools to enhance it? Even if your toolbox isn’t extensive yet, enthusiasm and curiosity are the keys to growth.
2 – Am I comfortable with being improvisational, spontaneous, and not always having a plan?
Academic life coaching is an improvisational art.
If you need a rigid plan or curriculum to feel in control, this might not be the right path for you. Coaching sessions often require flexibility and quick decision-making. Here’s a glimpse into how a session might unfold:
Take the first 10 minutes to gather updates:
How was their week?
What’s coming up (tests, assignments, extracurriculars)?
Do they have any missing work?
How are they feeling emotionally?
What do their parents want them to accomplish, and does the student agree?
Based on this discussion, the rest of the session could include:
Addressing late homework habits.
Planning for a new project.
Teaching study skills and creating a study plan.
Supporting emotional well-being with self-care strategies.
What’s my point here? Each session’s direction is determined in the moment, guided by your expertise and the student’s needs. It is not determined by a pre-set curriculum that you follow step by step.
Coaching requires adaptability in the educator, who relies on:
A diverse collection of tools.
Comfort with improvisation within structured routines.
Creativity thrives within structure. While flexibility is essential, having a standard set of routines and principles ensures consistency and clarity in your approach.
For more insights into session routines, consider checking out the Visitor’s Center of the Anti-Boring Learning Lab. There you’ll discover free mini-courses that will be helping to you, including “Should I Grow My Private Practice”? You’ll discover the 5 must-have systems for building a sustainable business and get a sneak peek into effective session structures.
3 – Am I willing to deal intimately with the messy (and sometimes dysfunctional) realities of family life?
Coaching teenagers often means navigating the dynamics of their family environment.
Common Scenario: A parent reaches out because the student is overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious about school. The parent hopes fixing the student’s habits and outlook will resolve the family’s stress.
Reality: Sometimes, the parent’s behaviors contribute to the student’s challenges. For instance:
An overly anxious parent constantly monitors grades, increasing the student’s stress.
A parent with ADHD may struggle to provide consistent structure.
Your Role:
Relieve parents of the administrative burden, allowing them to reconnect with their child.
Provide reassurance and empathy, acknowledging their efforts and challenges.
However, deeper family dysfunction may require you to set boundaries and focus on supporting the student within their circumstances. While you’re not a therapist, your role can include:
Guiding the student toward self-care and resilience.
Offering parents practical advice while maintaining professional boundaries.
In my training programs inside the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, I share tips for managing anxious parents and maintaining clear boundaries. These insights can be invaluable as you navigate complex family dynamics.
4 – Are you comfortable working with students who have learning differences and quirky brains?
Many students you’ll work with will have learning differences or experience anxiety or depression. While it’s possible to coach neurotypical students, embracing neurodiverse clients expands your reach and impact.
Key Considerations:
Familiarize yourself with concepts like executive functions and how they impact learning.
Be patient and creative, experimenting with tools to find what works best for each student.
Use neuropsychological evaluations as roadmaps to tailor your coaching strategies.
Support Available: My training includes an interview with a neuropsychologist and resources to help you understand executive functions and neurodiverse learning needs.
The Nature of Biz Building
This second set of questions is all about the unique challenges of starting your own business, and whether that path is right for you.
As I said in the video above, starting your own business is NOT for the faint of heart. So let’s take a closer look at some questions that will help you identify whether it’s the right path for you.
5 – Do I want a part-time or a full-time business?
If you are considering just starting out as an academic life coach, by necessity your business will most likely be part-time at first. However, it’s good to have a bit of a plan in mind, to know what you’re shooting for regarding the intended size of your business.
To make a realistic plan it’s important to consider three things:
Your schedule, and how many clients you can realistically fit in, and
The amount of money you need or want to earn
Where you plan to host sessions — your home, online, client’s homes, a cafe, etc.
Keep in mind that most academic coaching happens outside of school hours. If you are working with high school students, that means weekends and 3:30pm-9pm on weekdays.
If you have a full-time job and/or a family with young kids, this is a hard time to be working! But it’s not impossible. I know several coaches who have made a nice initial side business for themselves by working the following schedule:
1-2 nights a week after school, accepting 2-3 clients each night, and/or
3-4 clients in a row on the weekend.
One consideration related to schedule is where you will host the sessions. If you are driving to clients’ homes, you will be able to see fewer clients than if you see them at your home, at a cafe, or online. In the free course (that I’ve been hawking ad nauseum here), I’ll share more about what it’s like to have clients come to my home office and/or meet me on Zoom, which are my preferred methods.
Once you’re clear about how many client sessions your schedule will allow, then you get to decide whether this will bring in the money you need to make the business worthwhile.
Would you like my help sketching out a business plan, to get an idea about whether academic coaching is viable for you? I’m happy to oblige. First, work through the Should I Grow My Biz? free course that lays out several possible options for you in more detail than I’ve listed here, including:
How much I charge for each client each semester
What I recommend new coaches charge
Why I believe it’s important to charge by the package rather than the hour
And a lot more.
At the end of the free course, you’ll be able to sign up for a consultation with me (right now those consultations are free, though that might change in the future, so take advantage of it now!). We’ll meet for 30 minutes, discuss your schedule and financial needs, and map out a possible business plan. These sessions are so much fun for me, and folks usually leave with a ton of clarity about whether their academic coaching business is viable.
More info about Should I Grow My Biz? here, or keep on reading…
6 – Am I willing to invest time into marketing, even if it makes me uncomfortable?
Once you’ve outlined a basic business model for one-to-one coaching, you’ll know how many clients you need to attract each semester. While some clients renew from one semester to the next, many do not. So, ongoing marketing is essential to maintain a steady stream of clients.
I wish there were a simple formula for how many hours you should spend on marketing for every x clients you want to attract, but there isn’t. However, a good rule of thumb is to set aside at least 1-2 hours per week (or 4-8 hours per month) for marketing tasks to get your business off the ground and keep it going.
Note: When I say “marketing,” I don’t mean building a website or buying business cards. These tasks are NOT necessary when you’re starting your side business. It’s hard to believe, but trust me on this!
Also, marketing doesn’t have to feel salesy or icky. You can fill your 1-2 hours a week with fun, inspiring, and interesting tasks that will naturally attract new clients.
In both my free course Should I Grow My Private Practice? (which you can find inside the Anti-Boring Learning Lab’s visitor’s center) and our paid Rock Your Biz training, we look much more closely at what marketing looks like in the field of academic life coaching. I give you a recipe of actions you can take that both feel good and attract clients.
However, it’s important to be realistic: there will be some discomfort in marketing when you first start out.
Although the tasks I’ll share with you are actually fun and interesting, so many people are so frightened of the big monster named Marketing that they bring that fear with them.
Part of being willing to start your own business is to face the Monster, realize it’s not as bad as you think, and then start having fun with the Monster instead. It really is possible!
7 – Do I have the external and internal support systems in place to deal with the inevitable uncertainty that comes with starting a business?
Let’s be real. Starting a business is emotionally grueling work. There’s no sugar-coating this fact.
In the early days, it didn’t feel so hard because I had another job to back me up. But the moment I quit that job and committed to full-time self-employment, all my fears surfaced.
I had a huge fear of rejection. As a result, I kept my fees lower than they should’ve been, said “yes” to too many clients who weren’t ideal for me, and I avoided reaching out to colleagues who could help me with referrals.
Then there’s the financial feast or famine that often comes with starting a business. Until you have your marketing and business systems in place, there’s a lot of uncertainty. This can be emotionally taxing.
Please be clear on whether you have the courage to face this uncertainty. And if you say “yes,” make sure you have solid support systems in place. You’ll need people to lean on when things get tough—family, friends, therapists, like-minded colleagues, and group training programs (like my coaching programs)!
Next Steps: What’s Your Decision?
And that brings us to the end of this blog post! What are your thoughts? Has anything I said sparked a stronger “Yes! This is my life’s work!”—or maybe a “Ugh, not sure I’m ready for this yet”?
No matter where you fall on that spectrum, I encourage you to head over to our Visitor’s Center next. There you’ll find several free mini-courses that may help you on your decision-making journey. You can also attend my office hours to ask me questions!
Note: This blog entry is based on this one written back in 2018.